“New user behaviors take time to develop and sometimes require a breakthrough app to get things started. That’s where we are with chatbots. The hype phase is over and we are now into the figuring it out phase. That’s usually when interesting stuff starts to happen.”

More than half of mobile developers are living in “app poverty”: making less than $500 a month from their apps. We’ve produced an infographic which looks at insights such as this from The Evolving State of Mobile Commerce, a report published by VisionMobile in collaboration with Braintree.

In 2003 Europe’s mobile operators launched Simpay, promising to let us buy flowers and concert tickets across Europe, with the price added to our mobile-phone bill. By 2005 that had morphed into PayForIt, for UK operators only but with similar aspirations, and a similar lack of success. A decade later, mobile network operators are still being cut out of the payment loop, but not for lack of trying.

The mobile platform landscape was fairly stable for more than two years. Having both won the platform wars, Android and iOS seemed quite settled into their market positions. Android selling the most units in every market, but with iOS taking a dominant share of the lucrative high-end. Similarly, Android’s greater developer mindshare was always counterbalanced by iOS developers making the most revenue, and iOS being the primary platform for more full-time professionals.

Advertising is used as a revenue stream by 38% of mobile app developers, far higher than any other source, but the majority of developers chasing the advertising dollar aren’t making much money, so what kind of developer persists in embedding adverts when the real money is elsewhere?